i'm looking to identify my devices on the Arduino side using the always on low-power identifiers my devices broadcast to the tower. It will have a list of my ids on a local server and the Arduino will act accordingly when one of my devices is within range.

I guess the problem is that the phone isn't always broadcasting this id like I thought it was. It seems to only do this when trying to connect to a base station. This means I would need to create a device that masquerades as a base station, not impossible but a different problem then I originally thought.

I am moderately confident that I understand analog receivers operating at 'normal' frequencies, but when you get up to microwave frequencies, it all just gets a bit mad. All your wires become inductors capacitors are wires and all the normal transistors you are used to are orders of magnitude too slow.

You certainly can't just do things with a couple of transistors on a bread board and feed it into the Rx pin of your Arduino. Well if you do, I will be really impressed.

As far as I'm concerned it has far more in common with magic than the kind electronics I'm used to